Kutna Hora is a town in the Czech Republic about 70 km (44 miles) east of Prague. The town flourished during the 1300 due to the immense silver findings in the vicinity. The town provided most of the silver for the coins circulating in Europe at the time. As the town grew new churches were built and old ones repaired and expanded.

One of the most famous medieval cathedrals, the Church of Santa Barbara (Kostel sv. Barbora), was built at that ...

During WWII, the Gestapo used Terezín, better known by the German name Theresienstadt, as a ghetto, concentrating Jews from Czechoslovakia, as well as many from Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Denmark. Though it was not an extermination camp, of the over 150,000 Jews who arrived there, about 33,000 died in the ghetto itself, mostly because of the appalling conditions arising out of extreme population density. About 88,000 inhabitants were deported to Auschwitz ...

It's a monumental cemetery, but it is also an anthology of sculpture and architecture. Ernest Hemingway used to say 'One of the wonders of the world'

The Cemetery of Staglieno is not just a monument to the bourgeois culture of the XIX century, but also one of the main examples of funerary sculpture collection of all time, with its thousands of statues, often real works of art. It is an entire city of graves, mausuleums and monuments from all ...styles and epoques since 1851.

The monumental Cemetery of Staglieno is set in one of the eastern districts of Genoa, Italy. It can be easily reached with a short bus ride from the city centre. The noise of the traffic rising up from the busy street nearby will be a reminder of the outside world, as you wander in the lanes of this neoclassical structure.

Designed in the early XIX century by one of the most appreciated city's architects, Carlo Barabino, it features hundreds of striking marble sculptures and monuments to the personalities buried here.

The layout of the cemetery recalls the topography of Genoa itself with a labyrinth of paths and stone steps weaving up the hillside amongst towering cypresses and cedars. Ornately carved chapels and family tombs dot the grounds, and special areas are dedicated to British soldiers, priests and nuns of various religious orders. In the Protestant area you can see, among the others, the tomb of Mary Constance Lloyd, the wife of Oscar Wilde.

Staglieno is as much a sculpture garden as it is a cemetery and worth seeing for that reason alone. It is also quintessentially Italian, almost operatic in its flamboyance. Naturally, statues of Christ abound, some ethereal, some realistic, no two faces alike. At Staglieno there are a large number of partially clothed or entirely nude granite and marble female figures reclining languidly on sarcophagi or embracing tombstones. Apparently they were intended as surrogate mourners, but to other eyes, at least, they conveyed life-celebrating sensuality. The real reason to come to the old part of Staglieno is its cloister-like arcades. Mark Twain visited in 1868. In his funny travel book "Innocents Abroad," he tells how the corridors are lined on both sides by sarcophagi, adorned with life-size figures of angels and grieving family members, "exquisitely wrought and … full of grace and beauty." He had never seen anything quite so magnificent before and he waxed poetic, though not without a touch of humor. “They are new and snowy; every outline is perfect, every feature guiltless of mutilation, flaw or blemish”. To Twain's untutored eye, the sculptures seemed “a hundredfold more lovely than the damaged and dingy statuary [that has been] saved from the wreck of ancient art and set up in the galleries of Paris for the worship of the world”.